So Wednesday was The Day! Art (mine) and poetry (Will’s) have come together to help raise money for some babies. Josh and I have been working very hard on this project.

In 2009, I started 52ills - a blog dedicated to creating one illustration a week for a year. It was tough finding time and inspiration to keep at it all year long, but I made it to 2010 with 52 new drawings and a lot more experience.

Now, with help from Will’s awesome poems, I’ve grown some of those little drawings into full fledged book spreads. It’s 54 pages of adorable, ornery monsters. Some of the captions from the original 52ills posts remain — they are not haiku — but most of the poems found within Monster Haiku Vol. 1 are by Will.

We started taking pre-orders at 6am on Wednesday, and every time someone buys anything I do a little dance. Also, I can see everyone’s address, which honestly freaks me out. I promise to only use this info for shipping, and not so show up on anyone’s doorstep. Unless of course they have pie, in which case, y’know, all bets are off.

Josh and I set out to give a certain amount of money to March of Dimes at the beginning of the year. After some discussion, we decided we would reinvest that money into a project in the hopes of raising more than our personal finances could swing. As of 4pm on Wednesday, we had met and exceeded our original monetary donation goal. That alone made all the work that went into this project worth while.

But hey, aim big, right? Our next milestone is more ambitious, and we’ve got some fun things planned for the month of February to engage people and hopefully keep their minds (and wallets) open.

You can purchase Monster Haiku Vol. 1, along with posters, cards and original artwork at monsterhaiku.org. We’ll also be updating our Facebook on a daily basis with all sorts of goodies.